Organizations are falling short of their continuous integration and continuous delivery goals because they lack a coherent way to manage database lifecycles. With Redgate’s SQL Toolbelt, software teams can proactively include the database in the lifecycle processes they already have in place for the application. This includes development, release, change management, and maintenance to reduce risk, improve efficiency, and deliver value to their customers sooner.

“We make database lifecycle management ingeniously simple,” said Ben Rees, general manager at Redgate Software. “91% of the Fortune 100 and 638,735 people use our products to make changes to databases and to monitor database performance as changes are being made.”

Redgate has helped IT professionals working with .NET, SQL Server, Azure and Oracle solve difficult technical problems in a user-friendly way since 1999. At the Microsoft Build conference, the company will launch ReadyRoll, a database change management tool, as a new addition to its SQL Toolbelt, an end-to-end database lifecycle management solution. Its award-winning products help software teams at any stage of agile maturity manage database-related issues with ease.

Introducing ReadyRoll
Redgate acquired ReadyRoll in 2015 and will unveil the product as a Redgate tool at Build. Using ReadyRoll, users can create a series of numerically-ordered scripts to migrate from one schema version to the next.

“If you’re making change to a database and you’re working in a DevOps team, you’re worried about the deployability of your changes,” said Rees. “ReadyRoll is perfect for you.”

ReadyRoll provides maximum granularity and control over database changes, laying the foundation for further automation including automated deployments. With ReadyRoll, organizations can release new functionality to their customers faster and more frequently.

“Handling and managing schema changes can really slow down continuous integration and application lifecycle management processes,” said Rees. “ReadyRoll allows people working in the Microsoft Stack to move faster and they can more effectively embrace continuous delivery.”

As an example, with ReadyRoll, users can continuously integrate database changes simply by checking in application code and database migration scripts alongside each other.

Uniting Redgate’s Tools in the SQL Toolbelt
Redgate’s SQL Toolbelt brings all of Redgate’s SQL Server tools together. It offers users operational tools to keep their data safe and their databases performant and developer tools to increase team productivity and agility. The expanded offering includes version control, schema and data comparison, Intellisense, refactoring, performance monitoring, and backup capabilities.

“Our most successful customers are able to deliver software faster than their competitors,” said Gareth Marlow, COO of Redgate. “When development and operations have a common view of the data behind their applications and they are able deploy and release critical changes without causing data problems, development teams can be more productive and operations people can keep the systems up and running more effectively.”

However, in many organizations, agile development teams are producing features and changes at a faster, steadier pace than operations teams can deploy. As the teams move toward continuous delivery, they need processes and mechanisms that allow them to achieve a steady stream of smaller, less-risky deployments. They also need appropriate review steps in place as changes are made across environments, which SQL Toolbelt enables. Using SQL Toolbelt, organizations can achieve their cadence goals, regardless of where they are on the agile continuum, even though software, data environments, and production environments are becoming more complex over time.

“The days of building a few set of applications on one big SQL Server in the machine room are gone. Now the data stores are on premise, in the cloud, relational and non-relational,” said Marlow. “Your role as a development manager, developer or operations professional is much more exciting because you have all this new technology. However, the complexity is much greater. SQL Toolbelt gives you the visibility, control, and process efficiency you need to deliver software faster and more securely.”

Redgate’s Proven Solutions Work
Organizations across industries have been using Redgate’s version control, continuous integration, release management, monitoring, and other capabilities included in SQL Toolbelt to achieve dramatic process improvements. For example, HR software company Nmbrs reduced database update time frames from a week to 10 minutes using Redgate’s SQL Source Control, SQL CI, and Octopus Deploy. Now, its database updates are as easy to deploy as application updates.

Similarly, flight search company Skyscanner has accelerated its deployments from six weeks to as much as 95 times per day using SQL Release and SQL Compare. The tools provide the visibility and release acceleration capabilities the company needed to help speed software delivery and to achieve competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, telecom software developer Calvi has been using Redgate’s SQL developer tools to improve quality and productivity. In the past two years, the company has had no database-related bugs, and it is saving several database administration and development man hours per week.

For more information, visit www.redgate.com.